Question What games are you playing?

steph

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 22, 2008
Messages
1,393
Reaction score
713
Points
113
Location
Vendee, France
Well, gamepad has gradual input,so I guess it'll be fine. A wheel wouldn't be a bad idea, since the pedals and a joystick that I usually used for FSX are just gathering dust now. Maybe even a hybrid setup with the joystick for gears?

But yes, the Colin McRae stuff was amazing back in the day. I might even try Dirt some day, I hear it's quite the good stuff for offroad. But then again, Horizon had almost universally good reviews?
 

Urwumpe

Not funny anymore
Addon Developer
Donator
Joined
Feb 6, 2008
Messages
37,588
Reaction score
2,312
Points
203
Location
Wolfsburg
Preferred Pronouns
Sire
Well, gamepad has gradual input,so I guess it'll be fine. A wheel wouldn't be a bad idea, since the pedals and a joystick that I usually used for FSX are just gathering dust now. Maybe even a hybrid setup with the joystick for gears?

But yes, the Colin McRae stuff was amazing back in the day. I might even try Dirt some day, I hear it's quite the good stuff for offroad. But then again, Horizon had almost universally good reviews?

Well, one day I will build a stationary simpit for DCS.... after a lot of other work is done and I own the house I live in....
 

steph

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 22, 2008
Messages
1,393
Reaction score
713
Points
113
Location
Vendee, France
I'm not sure where the threshold for simpit is, but my brother tried something similar during the lockdowns. Playing FSX with stick & rudder abd a 3rd party VR with headtracker etc. He sort of tried to supplement his training, as he was supposed to get his pilot licence when the whole thing happened. He said it was a bit too much of an uncanny valley when flying manually. I guess it could even have been the lag of the VR, but anyways
 

N_Molson

Addon Developer
Addon Developer
Donator
Joined
Mar 5, 2010
Messages
9,271
Reaction score
3,244
Points
203
Location
Toulouse
FSX, a Robin DR-400 parked in Lourdes, France. Behind you can see the Pyrénées into the clouds. Not exactly a good day for VFR near the mountains.

DR-400_001.jpg
 

N_Molson

Addon Developer
Addon Developer
Donator
Joined
Mar 5, 2010
Messages
9,271
Reaction score
3,244
Points
203
Location
Toulouse
Still FSX, CRJ-100 cruising over France Atlantic coast earlier this evening (with real weather from FSXWX with FSUI)

Uneventful flight except I was completely rusted with instruments landing, because of workload and cloud cover I flew over Nantes airport without even noticing it, which is bad. Even worse, the landing was barely on the runway, I think the right tires were in the grass. So passengers alive and at home but probably furious about the delay and scared to death by the landing ?

CRJ-700.jpg
 

Urwumpe

Not funny anymore
Addon Developer
Donator
Joined
Feb 6, 2008
Messages
37,588
Reaction score
2,312
Points
203
Location
Wolfsburg
Preferred Pronouns
Sire
Gave "Tin Can" a try, which is a nice little challenge about surviving in a terribly broken escape pod. Is more fun than it should be. In Rescue mode, which I started with, the scenario always starts with a different set of spareparts in your capsule, so it really matters to grab a varied set of parts during the first minute of the game, before you release the escape pod. It has a clear "Losing is fun" feeling as well there, since dying is always nearby. Either by electrical shock when poking around in your life support system without securing you properly in microgravity or by hyperoxia, when you released a full bottle of oxygen into the capsule because your oxygen generator broke down completely.

 

PhantomCruiser

Wanderer
Moderator
Tutorial Publisher
Joined
Jan 23, 2009
Messages
5,600
Reaction score
165
Points
153
Location
Cleveland
Saturday kiddos Mk1 (plus boyfriend), kiddo Mk2, and possibly wife will pick back up on our D&D campaign :)

Computer game wise, I'm replaying KOTOR.
 

IronRain

The One and Only (AFAIK)
Administrator
Moderator
News Reporter
Donator
Joined
Oct 11, 2009
Messages
3,484
Reaction score
403
Points
123
Location
Utrecht
Website
www.spaceflightnewsapi.net
I've just finished Horizon Forbidden West, and wow. Halo will always be my number one but this one is getting very close.
The story is a bit slow and some side quests are a bit repetitive (go to point x, kill machines, come back) but it's all worth it.

Didn't play any other game while going through that one. Not sure what to do next, it's the "I've finished a game" void which I haven't had for a long time. Feels good though.
 

clipper

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 27, 2018
Messages
256
Reaction score
388
Points
63
I've just finished Horizon Forbidden West, and wow. Halo will always be my number one but this one is getting very close.
The story is a bit slow and some side quests are a bit repetitive (go to point x, kill machines, come back) but it's all worth it.

Didn't play any other game while going through that one. Not sure what to do next, it's the "I've finished a game" void which I haven't had for a long time. Feels good though.
I got into Horizon back when it came out on PS4 due to its interesting setting and art style (I'm a sucker for sci-fi/fantasy blends) - but the graphics alone on Forbidden West (on PS5 at least) are more than enough of a reason to try it out; it's probably the only game where I've spent literal hours in photo mode just admiring the visual quality and the amount of effort devs put into it.

I mean, they even modeled peach fuzz on Aloy. How am I supposed to ever play a game without peach fuzz now? :LOL:
 

steph

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 22, 2008
Messages
1,393
Reaction score
713
Points
113
Location
Vendee, France
The good part - it's probably a year away, after being delayed from the 11 november date. The bad part, it can still go wrong. Todd howard just went out and calmly said that all the landing , take-off etc will be just cutscenes, with the planetary and space stuff being separate :oops:. Bad, potentially very bad. This risks being something like Outerworlds, but with more worlds. I still can't imagine how they'd do a space RPG without actual spaceflight , but depending on how bad they screw up (IF they do), spaceflight might be reduced to a few menu choices and some views from the ship. But then again, that almost guarantees that the planets won't be planets, but a bunch of separate maps with designated landing spots. So much for the '1000 explorable worlds'. I mean, I guess there should be a middle ground of sorts. Even NMS fails sometimes on the procedural generation side, while the stuff that 'sabotaged' Cyberpunk was the huge amount of human-made stuff. They ended up with a beautiful city, full of unique stuff, but they wasted so many resources on creating it that most of the rest was broken.

 

Urwumpe

Not funny anymore
Addon Developer
Donator
Joined
Feb 6, 2008
Messages
37,588
Reaction score
2,312
Points
203
Location
Wolfsburg
Preferred Pronouns
Sire
I think its more critical that Starfield will still use the same old Bethesda engine. All those design decisions like separating spaceflight and planet exploration are essentially just because of the technical limitations of that old engine. If it wasn't possible yet in Skyrim or Fallout 4, it won't work in Starfield. The construction system also seems to be just an evolution from the Fallout experience.

I would really love to have a more Star Trek like experience in gaming: The ship is the map, everything else outside just happens outside. Instead, you have a large crew to interact with, etc. Maybe some way to visit space stations, switch to a new ship, explore planets... but still, your current ship should be all the world you need. No boredom, because additionally to the events outside the ship and its mission, you also have your relations to the rest of the crew, your own character to develop, etc.
 

clipper

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 27, 2018
Messages
256
Reaction score
388
Points
63
Thanks to FDev and the shitstorm that ED Odyssey was, my bar for space games is so low it may as well reside in earth's inner core; so I'll prolly end up giving Starfield a shot (will def wait a month or two at least to avoid the most egregious bugs Bethesda will no doubt include as part of their usual experience).

Judging by the reveal, they seemed to have improved distant terrain LOD quite a bit in Creation Engine 2 - though they might've just cranked up that aspect to eleven for showcase purposes which might explain the FPS drops (or the game might just be really poorly optimized at the moment). AI is still pretty crap though and AFAIK there's been no word on seamless transitions between areas on the surface; for spaceflight that's not really a big deal IMHO as they can always just do what Elite Dangerous did and mask loading screens with 'hyperspace' and planetary 'glide approach' animations.

On the flip side keeping the old engine means that it'll retain its modding capabilities which is something that always placed BGS games ahead of all its peers for me, and that's really the only thing I'm actually somewhat hyped for - so I'll just treat the game as a sandbox at this point and not so much as an RPG. I also dig its aesthetics as I enjoyed some of NMS gameplay loops but just couldn't get used to its visual style, and ED is pretty much on life support at this point, so one way or the other this will probably be the game for me to scratch that space itch with for quite some time.
 

jedidia

shoemaker without legs
Addon Developer
Joined
Mar 19, 2008
Messages
10,842
Reaction score
2,105
Points
203
Location
between the planets
landing , take-off etc will be just cutscenes, with the planetary and space stuff being separate :oops:. Bad, potentially very bad.
Dude, this was the norm, and mostly still is... They do have spaceflight, they just don't have complete freedom and seamless transition. Gameplay will very probably be mostly planet focused, but I was actually surprised that the ship was more than just scenery.
I'm still rather sceptical, with the game being made by bethesda and me not much enjoying a single bethesda game since morrowind, but I am somewhat intruiged. I have no idea where they wanna go with this, since one of my major criticism with bethesda games is that their worlds are compressed into a theme park beyond not only the suspension of disbelief, but also general atmosphere, and this one might actually try to break with that tradition. If we're getting daggerfall in space instead of skyrim in space, I'd be delighted, but I don't quite believe it yet...
 

steph

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 22, 2008
Messages
1,393
Reaction score
713
Points
113
Location
Vendee, France
Well, I don't know why this gives me a feeling of Morrowind meets Fallout in space. In a way, even NMS had loading screens and some sort of transition. Let's not kid ourselves, any space game that isn't using Newtonian physics probably won't have a true atnospheric entry etc.Even fallout had weird stuff like using the Vertibird but controlling it through the map etc. It could go several ways.

While that NPC's face was awfully familiar, I'm still holding some hopes for the engine. It's made for Xbox X/S, so it should be free of the 'curse' that plagued games so far, having to be able to run on last gen consoles, basically the lowest denominator

I also dig its aesthetics as I enjoyed some of NMS gameplay loops but just couldn't get used to its visual style, and ED is pretty much on life support at this point, so one way or the other this will probably be the game for me to scratch that space itch with for quite some time.

Yeah, that's what got me too at NMS. Too damn colourful. I'm still updating it as we speak, gotta see what's it all about with the space whales and the previous few updates. That's the realy good part about it. They're still making it better.
Haven't tried Odyssey yet, but ED is a blast. Perhaps a bit too much space shooter sometimes, but perhaps that was just my gameplay style
 

jedidia

shoemaker without legs
Addon Developer
Joined
Mar 19, 2008
Messages
10,842
Reaction score
2,105
Points
203
Location
between the planets
It's made for Xbox X/S, so it should be free of the 'curse' that plagued games so far, having to be able to run on last gen consoles
Oh, it is? Oh well, that means it's also free of the curse of being able to run on my laptop... ?‍♂️

I've looked a little at the Terra Invicta Demo currently on Steam. Now there's a game that might be interesting for orbinauts. It's your basic X-Com premise, but instead of a squad-tactics core it features a backstabbing geopolitical simulator with a space race and solar system colonisation and exploitation, and it ranks pretty high on the Moh scale. Not as high as children of a dead earth from what I've seen, but then it is much higher level and so is allowed to abstract things a lot more.
Still, having a tech-tree that might as well be an index page for the atomic rockets website is pretty promising.

I guess if I had to describe it in one sentence, it would be "the inofficial expanse simulator" (except the tech seems to be harder, though I'm not sure how much of that will push through the abstraction)...

It might qualify as a 4x game from what I've seen, though it takes some liberties with the structure. A hard-scifi 4x-like limited to the solar system does sound very appealing to me.
 

Urwumpe

Not funny anymore
Addon Developer
Donator
Joined
Feb 6, 2008
Messages
37,588
Reaction score
2,312
Points
203
Location
Wolfsburg
Preferred Pronouns
Sire
A hard-scifi 4x-like limited to the solar system does sound very appealing to me.

Begin such an add-on for Orbiter and I'll join you instantly. (y)

I really miss the options that World of 2001 already offered. A World of 2001 with missions or economics behind would have been an epic open-world gameplay.
 
Top